 
         ;; 1. generate sentence in target language.
         ;; resolve future
-        target-language-sentence (engine/generate spec target-language-model :enrich true)
-        
+        target-language-sentence (engine/generate spec target-language-model
+                                                  :enrich true
+                                                  :truncate-children false)
+        ;; we don't want to truncate because we want to store the entire tree in the _structure_ and _serialized_ columns of the database,
+        ;; so that we can search for them with specifications that might include :comp and :head search keys.
+        ;; for example, (defn fill-language-by-spec) is passed a _spec_ param which, depending on the language's
+        ;; writer implementation (e.g. babel.italiano/writer searches based on :comp and :head).
         target-language-sentence (if (:morph-walk-tree target-language-model)
                                    (merge ((:morph-walk-tree target-language-model) target-language-sentence)
                                           target-language-sentence)

                                           (map (fn [number]
                                                  (let [spec (unify spec
                                                                    {:comp {:synsem {:agr {:number number}}}})]
                                                    (log/debug (str "generating from spec: " spec))
                                                    (try
                                                      (process [{:fill-one-language
                                                                 {:count 1

        language (:language model)
        debug (log/debug (str "populate-with-language: spec: " spec "; language: " language))]
    (dotimes [n num]
      (let [sentence (engine/expression model spec :truncate-children false)
            ;; we don't want to truncate because we want to store the entire tree in the _structure_ and _serialized_ columns of the database,
            ;; so that we can search for them with specifications that might include :comp and :head search keys.
            ;; for example, (defn fill-language-by-spec) is passed a _spec_ param which, depending on the language's
            ;; writer implementation (e.g. babel.italiano/writer searches based on :comp and :head).
            fo (:morph model)
            surface (fo sentence)]
        (if (empty? surface)
